Lines

WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT?

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The concept of “importance”, the way it exists for us, does not exist to God. What is important to God is the purity, health and harmony of His Creation, and the proper development of all its inhabitants in accordance with His Will.

A soul who, in our opinion, was very “important” in one earthlife can incarnate as a complete “nobody” – again judged by our concept – in the next. Obscurity and fame are both irrelevant to God, just as material wealth and material poverty play no role in determining our true value in God’s Creation. What we consider to be “good health” and “ill health” are but temporary conditions of our physical shells. Of more importance to the Divine Will is the condition of our spirit.

Paradise is a place of good spirits, and this is what is still lacking on earth. That is why “Thy Kingdom come” remains still just a prayer and not yet a reality, because His Will is yet to be done by us on earth as It is in Heaven. This is why we do not yet have Paradise here on earth too.

Nothing else is important. Not political power or military might; not wealth, fame or status; and not many other things and people to which we attach importance. The only thing that matters is the kind of soul you are, not just deep inside your heart, but also in your manifest action. Irrespective of whether you be the most unknown and obscure person in some invisible place somewhere, or whether you be the most visible and powerful person on earth.

It sounds strange, and it is hard to grasp, but the truth is that on that plane where eternal life plays itself out, the only thing that matters is character – true spiritual character. The good man and the good woman – the truly good people – are the ones who become the kings and queens. A completely different scenario from what obtains on Earth, on this temporary theatre where our physical life takes place.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

THE FINAL IMPRESSION

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The last picture we have of a person determines what we continue to think about that person; and yet that person might have changed the very next day after the last time we saw them.

But for years and decades after that we continue to hold this picture and this opinion about the person.

And should our paths ever cross again we usually begin to relate again to that person and that opinion and that picture and that character that was the one we last experienced and remember.

So, we end up talking to a ghost and missing the real person right there in front of us.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

A LITTLE HAPPY EVERYDAY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes you love someone, but the person loves someone else. Or the person simply prefers a lifestyle different from the one which a life with you would have to offer them. So they choose or go after someone else who, or another path that, can offer them that lifestyle.

Being that the aim, the very aim, of life itself is Happiness, this experience of rejection cuts to the very heart of the essence of existence. The hurt can kill the soul. It makes people reappraise themselves, question their worth and even find fault in their own fundamental character. Yet, while self-examination is healthy, so also are self-love, self-understanding and self-acceptance equally necessary.

When trapped in a spiral of self-abnegation in which one no longer recognises oneself, It then becomes imperative to awaken, within one’s consciousness, a new narrative of life and of self in order to find the path to a new source of joy, as a new person. To outgrow the self-image that traps one in a cycle of pain, perhaps even to shed certain traits, and to learn to see oneself, one’s path and one’s Why with fresh new eyes. To find a new understanding of the purpose of life.

This is where the concept of never giving up comes into play. Every morning when you wake up, strive for joy. Be prepared to let go of those thoughts and those beliefs that weigh you down debilitatingly. Be ready and able every day to try a new path, a new thought, until you find the exit – and then you can take flight again.

Life is a jigsaw puzzle. Many parts fit, but many parts don’t fit also. And you have to move the pieces about in your heart and in your life continuously, often, and courageously in order to slowly put your answers together.

And, as you stride on along this way, try… try to be a little happy every day. In the end, that’s all you have. That’s all we have to share with one another. That is our humanity.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

INDEPENDENCE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

My good nature, my balanced constitution, cannot be dependent on the presence of a person in my life, or on the love I receive from anybody, or on my good health, or on wealth or status or power.

It has to derive from my relationship with GOD, the Unchanging One, the Almighty One, the Eternal, the Omnipresent Omnipotent Omniscient ONE. The Author and the Finisher. Love and Life Itself.

My happiness cannot be dependent on anything or anyone outside of me, apart from GOD, and that thing within me – deep in my heart – that relates with GOD.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains

DON’T SURRENDER IT ALL TO AI

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The primary aim of artistic expression is inner clarification of self, as well as personal spiritual development. The secondary aim is communication and sharing of ideas, which in any case always happens automatically as a by-product.

If you outsource all your artistic creativity to Artificial Intelligence, then, yes, finished works of a certain mould will be generated, but your spirit will not grow. And the purpose of your earthlife – the very purpose of life itself – will not be fulfilled. This lies alone in the continuous development of your “I” through self-exertion, self-clarification and the constant effort towards pure and accurate self-expression of intuition via thought into word and deed.

AI will produce works that resemble beauty, but will lead to the atrophy and death of the human spirit – unless you critically interrogate those works and then correct, reject or surmount them with your own personal effort, your own intuiting and reasoning. Don’t surrender to AI. Learn it but remain above it. Artificial Intelligence will make you look good, make you feel good, but only you can become better by yourself, by your own effort. The ancient rule is still the same, there is no short cut to success.

It is very imperative, in this era of artificial intelligence, for each person to remain personally creative, as well as spiritually and intellectually active and independent. Make the effort to think your own thoughts through to the end, and formulate and write them down by yourself. Compose, rehearse and record your own music. Make your own art. Draw the inspiration not just from others, but also, like before, from within the fathomless depths of your immortal spirit. Spend time in the silence of your heart, listening to your inner voice, hearing yourself by yourself and not from the programmed algorithm of an AI companion’s voice.

And also continue to do as many things with your hands as possible. Build. Make. Write. Go out into the world. Use your physical muscles, use your brain muscles, use your heart muscles, use your soul and use your spirit. And also, PATRONISE THOSE WHO DO SO, THOSE WHO STILL PRODUCE BY THE EFFORT OF HUMAN CREATIVITY. When you do this, you are not doing them a favour, but you are doing yourself and humanity and our future a SERVICE!

This is the only way they will grow. This is the only way we will grow. This is how we survived as a species over millions of years. This is how we got here. By the agency of Natural personal Human Intelligence. WE have always been the ones evolving, the ones plumbing our own depths, the ones developing. Thus: Woe betide us today if we now, tempted by convenience, hand that task now over to a self-programming and self-learning artificial algorithm we fashioned. Like the Zauberlehrling who can no longer deactivate or control the witchcraft he awakened. We would thereby have marked the beginning of the end of the story of the human spirit on Earth.

We are the generation that must tame the beast we have created, and ensure that it remains a servant and never becomes the cold lifeless master of our destiny, literally and figuratively. AI is wonderful for sourcing and collating information, and sorting and delivering it coherently. It is also marvellous at generating alternative versions of expressive output. But it cannot see the light. It cannot produce that individual unique recognition that can only come from deep within you. And it cannot produce the NEW, a truly new and different future. It can only regurgitate and re-permutate the past.

The production of Newness is still the purview and the task of the living and active human spirit. Let AI not be our last invention. Let us continue to bestir ourselves to intuit, imagine, innovate and invent even greater creations in the future, greater and higher than AI, and which also come from us – or through us. For WE are human spirit.

Retain your primary art-form in your hands. Don’t outsource it in the name of comfort, or vanity, or convenience, or competition, or materialism. Save and continue to develop that which is most valuable to us – our spirit. Let art, intuition and inspired thinking continue to be tools for personal inner growth through the joy of effort.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

TIME DOES NOT CHANGE THINGS

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Time doesn’t change things, they stay as they are. Events change things. Experiences change things. Things change things. Not time. Time only changes the outer appearance of the form of things.

Sometimes a thing that seems like it will last forever only lasts a short time and then changes, because the thing or event that will change it met it early.
While sometimes an other thing that seems flimsy and ephemeral stays unchanged for eternities, because the thing or experience that will change it has not yet met it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

USING SELF-CONFIDENCE

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

The most powerful thing you can give people is confidence. Self-confidence. But some people, once they have it they turn around and use it against you, who awakened it in them.

Next time, you feel like leaving people wallowing in their pitiful inferiority complex.

But a part of you still goes ahead and keeps on strengthening people who need it everywhere you meet them. What they later do with this strength and self-confidence is their business.

You have done yours.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

HAPPINESS IS PARADISE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The end result of life should be happiness. If you live a long and “fulfilled” life, and yet at the end you are full of sadness and uncertainty – what was the point?

I don’t know what or where Paradise is – but if it’s not a synonym for Happiness, what’s the point in making it the destination of your travels?

As simple as it may sound, the aim of life is to be happy – nothing more. The difficult exercise along the way is finding your happiness without unfairly or willfully impeding the happiness of another.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

It is an illusion that Government can save Nigeria. All government can do is more or less throw its weight behind either the fair redistribution of our national wealth or not.

This thing we call “our wealth” however is our biggest self-deception, because we did not create it and do not truly posess it. We simply take what Nature made and sell it and pocket the money without even giving any part of it back to nature.
We then stash away the bulk of this money and share a small part amongst ourselves and use the little rest for “business”. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is inventing itself AWAY from fossil fuels and a system dependent on it.

Real wealth or poverty lies in the ideas that bubble up in the mind. The only thing that can save Nigeria long term is twofold:
1. To learn to transform by ourselves the bulk of those raw materials stage by stage into the final world-class products that everybody else will need and will queue up to buy.
2. To become a scientifically inventing people and culture who already now think up and excute solutions for the time when oil has finished or become irrelevant. A people who don’t eternally leave the inventing of the future to foreigners. That kind of hardwork and industry awakens new virtues and powers in a people and a culture.

Any government that, in addition to meeting its fundamental security and human rights responsibilities, also supports, engenders and midwives this new path, is a government that truly understands and wants to solve the problem LONG TERM. Any other one is just implementing short-term measures, more or less effectively. But the real danger – eventual contextual Recolonialization – remains.

If the Federal Government cannot or will not do it, either because of ineptitude or corruption or bigotry, then each State Government has to step forward and do what is within its power in the service of modernising its citizens – mentally, morally, materially and technologically.

Even on the level of the Local Government – indeed especially on the level of the LG – can the push towards a transformation of the peoples and their conditions take place.

Going by the level of corruption and desperation and visionlessness on ground now, that might seem just like wishful thinking. But I believe events will make it incredibly obvious that we are marching straight back into subjugation – either at the hands of Islamic Imperialism via a hegemonic section of the Fulani power-holders assisted by their lackeys in the other tribes; or at the hands of White Western Supremacist economic, military and political control; or at the hands of rising Asian globalization of dominance spearheaded by the Chinese.

One way or the other we’re going to get it unless we become truly independent and the governments of the Nigerian peoples get right the two points mentioned above, and find a way to tie it into Panafricanism.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

TOLERANCE FOR THE SAKE OF COMPLEMENTARITY

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Human society needs a healthy mix of capitalism and socialism. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.

Human society needs a healthy mix of faith and doubt. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.

The world needs a healthy balance between “I” and “we”. Too much of either one has always proven to be bad.

We divide ourselves into “left” and “right”; and then we forget that left and right are the two legs on which that which is Human walks, balanced. They are not adversaries of one another; they are complementary to one another. Each must tolerate the other, for the sake of all.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.